Day 63: Saturday, July 6

Tenting at a stealth site a few miles past the Echo Lakes (PCT mi ~1098.0), walked 3.6 miles today

Woke up at 6:30 from 4.5 wretched hours of sleep on the two seat cushions, walked about a half-hour through grey deserted Berkeley, then caught the BART train and after an hour made it to Dublin/Pleasanton. Passed the time reading a highly interesting old article, that I think I read when it originally came out in 2005, from Backpacker magazine called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being Scott Williamson." Met up with my dad at 8:30 and we headed for the hills via charming Central Valley towns like Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova. Around 12 we made it to the trailhead, I fiddled with my pack a bit (I'm back to having a point and shoot digital camera but I didn't have a good place to put it), he took some pictures of me and I headed off. Only two miles up the trail was the Echo Lake store, there were some unfamiliar hikers out front but I hung out there anyway for an hour or so. 2 miles had given me the appetite/thirst for a milkshake and two sodas. At the second time of asking, the Echo Lake PO still could not find my box, but at the third time they could. I had completely forgotten that it was going to have food and new hiking clothes in it. I was already well-stocked from my grocery run yesterday, but now I have at least 5 days of food with me, more than I need. I sent home, reluctantly, the long pants and salmon shirt and traded them out for the newly arrived black running shorts and elephant-grey MHW shirt from this year's REI garage sale. A whole new me! With a lot more leg showing. I'm now in a seriously warm-weather clothing setup without much contingency for cold weather, and a lousy one (my wind pants) if the mosquitos return with the same thrust as before.

Out front of the store, some southbounder asshat who had no idea what he was talking about was comparing Portland and San Francisco and said that Portland is "more diverse" and at that point I felt it was best for everyone if I repaired to the solitude of the wilderness. Except there was no solitude, just a constant stream of day-hikers around the lakes. Was really tired of this, and tired in general, so around 4 I looked kind of far off-trail for a break spot and stumbled upon a pretty good stealth camp site. Didn't really want to hike any farther ... I've noticed lately that on days that start off in town, I have zero motivation to do miles no matter what time I get back out, but if I wake up in the woods, I am game for 25 every time. I sat in the shade and read my Kindle app for awhile and am probably going to be asleep by about 8.

Edit: I was trying to cowboy camp and I would have been asleep at 8 had that not also been the witching hour for mosquitos. Hadn't seen a single one all afternoon but they materialized from the æther around 7:45 and I had to set up my tent around 8:15 when they became unbearable.

Day 62: Friday, July 5

Crashing on two chairs at some random pad in Berkeley, not even going to pretend like this has anything to do with the PCT, it's a zero day

Ate 3 people's worth of food at the hotel continental breakfast this morning, after which I went grocery shopping for the next 60 miles of trail and then my dad fell back asleep on the motel room bed, giving me time to gather my things and make plans for the day. These consisted of being driven to Berkeley and dropped off at my friend Charlie's new place. Charlie just graduated from college and has a job about to start in the Bay Area and moved to Berkeley about 3 days ago. And I've never been here before, so neither he nor I had any idea what to do or see ... We took off walking around noon, hit all the major streets in the area and covered what I assume is most of the campus. At around 4 we and his roommates headed to a bar that had a sliding-scale happy hour deal on pitchers ($6 until 5 pm, $7 until 6 and so on), and at around 6 my great friend Jordan from college also showed up fresh off work. We noticed another 2010 alum, Emma, sitting at another table at the same bar ... Emma, it so happens, is aiming for a lifelong section-hike of the PCT and had just been out a few weeks earlier on the VVR-Sonora section, except southbound. She said at one point that if she could be hiking at all times, she would be ... That's an attitude that I can relate to, because every time someone asks me why I've wanted to do such a long hike, in the process of answering their question I realize exactly how much I like it and how much I feel I'm well-suited for it, especially in comparison to just about anything else in life. So we all had a lot to talk about.

The bar group broke up around 8 and then things got weird. We were locked out of Charlie's apartment, so we went over to the neighbors' place. The neighbors are 9 Irish boys from Galway, all living together, all taking a break from college, almost all under 21, all in Berkeley completely on a whim. Their flat was possibly the messiest and most overtly substance-friendly residence I've ever been in. They smoked and drank a lot and we all sat and talked about this and that (they liked my very Irish name and my knowledge of Irish geography, which I conceded was 100% derived from an obsession with Joyce's Dubliners my senior year of high school), then they were under the impression that there was a frat party somewhere, so we all walked for at least 15 minutes aimlessly around Berkeley ... There was no frat party, we broke up and then I waited about 25 minutes with the other Americans for a late-night cookie and ice cream sandwich from some place called CREAM, Cookies Rule Everything Around Me (cream get the money, dolla dolla bill y'all). It was okay, but not worth the Voodoo Doughnuts-esque wait. Finally we got back to the now open apartment and the only place they had for me to sleep was two cushy chairs facing each other. I'll make do, especially as I'm taking the BART early tomorrow morning to get back to San Ramon, so it's not like I'd be sleeping much anyway. This is the first day I've had since May 3 that had absolutely zero to do with the trail, and it felt more than strange. I mean I had fun, but looking back on it something almost seems wrong, because of how intensely I've tied myself up in the PCT effort for two months in a row. Tomorrow I'm almost certainly getting back to the trail and moving forward, so my world can be framed by that simple context once more.

Day 61: Thursday, July 4

In San Ramon, CA (left trail at PCT mi 1092.0), walked 15.0 miles today

Well, this day took off in an unforeseen direction. Woke up at 6:30 and hiked by 7. Was very tired because of low calorie input ... after about 7 miles that were harder than they should've been, got some cell service and called my dad. He was going to be in the Tahoe area much earlier than expected so we agreed to meet a little further trail-south, at Echo Summit, at 1pm instead of 4. When I met him, the traffic on Hwy 50 to Tahoe was backed up all the way to where we were, 12 miles west, so neither of us really wanted to go down there. I needed, at minimum, a meal, groceries and laundry and would have also preferred not to camp for the night ... the only way to accomplish those goals, without confronting the insanity of Lake Tahoe on the 4th of July in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave driving half of California up into the mountains, seemed to be to head westbound and down. He had a hotel room for the night in San Ramon, in the East Bay, which was previously unbeknownst to me. I said we could go that far if need be, I have friends to hang out with in the Bay, and I could take a bus back up Friday or Saturday depending.

So that's what happened. First we hopped over to the Echo Lake store, which was slammed with people, including some hikers. My maildrop parcel there, which was confirmed delivered on June 29, was unlocatable ... I'll just have to try again later on that front. Got sandwiches and milkshakes, I added two San Pellegrino sodas and we hit the road going against the traffic down to the Bay. Between the two great cities of Sacramento and Stockton, the car thermometer showed 112 degrees (see picture). Made it to the hotel around 5 and got laundry done ... While that was happening, I was so ravenously hungry and impatient to leave for dinner that I was reduced to eating from the jar of complimentary breath mints. Finally did get dinner at a restaurant around 7 ... Thai salad, lasagna, two slices of my dad's pizza, peach cobbler, ice cream, two Chainbreakers, and I was hardly full but kind of drunk, which is embarrassing after 2 pints but that's pretty much de rigueur for me when hiking. Talked at length with my dad about his and my mom's recent trip to the Arctic ... They got to see Fridtjof Nansen's ship /Fram/, which is the part I was most jealous of because I love Nansen. After dinner I got in touch with my good friend Elliott from college, who lives literally a 10-minute walk from this hotel ... Went over to his place, hung out, caught up and then, crucially, played Call of Duty Zombies til almost midnight. Could not in a hundred years have predicted that end to my day when I woke up alone in my tent on top of the Elephant's Back this morning. Who knows what tomorrow holds in store ... Will I even be in this country once it's over?

Day 60: Wednesday, July 3

Tenting on the saddle near Elephant's Back (PCT mi 1077.0), walked 29.4 miles today

Got out by 7 and within a mile ran into Goldilocks and Frosty breaking camp, I had first seen them yesterday but walked with them all morning and got to know them a bit. Spied a trail-magic cooler at the road crossing at Ebbett's Pass, but all that was left in it was 3 Coors ... 7:45 was just too early for that. Walked the morning in 7.5-mile chunks, it included some absolutely beautiful desert-like scenery, with green scrubby prairies and huge red rock formations all around. Got to a creek at 12:15 and could barely keep my eyes open eating my snacks, so I pitched my tent in the shade and took a medium siesta, 1-2:30.

Resumed walking at 3 and didn't see anyone else the rest of the day. Storms rolled in around 4 but there was never much rain, only thunder that naturally hit its peak right as I was covering a completely exposed ridge section where the next-tallest thing besides me was the knee-high brush. Lived to tell about it. Hiked until about 9:20, only had to turn my headlamp on for the last 5 minutes or so. The last climb took me through two terrifying snow slopes, one of which I went over, the second one I scrambled down and around on solid ground. Didn't need to try my hand at glissading for the first time on this trip at 9pm utterly alone.

Was in an unusual amount of discomfort today from three sources: my feet, which are suffering from the lack of cushion of real socks; my entire undercarriage, which has been chafing ever since I started wearing long pants; and my stomach, which immediately started to feel twisted when I ate an apple yesterday and really didn't get fully corrected for 24 hours. That resupply from the Bridgeport General Store, which cost an exorbitant $40, is completely gone now, I've eaten all of it. Only one meal's worth of muesli and some PB and probably stale tortillas are left to get me to Echo Lake tomorrow. 17 miles ...

Day 59: Tuesday, July 2

Tenting just past Noble Creek (PCT mi 1047.6), walked 27.8 miles today

Fell asleep last night to very calm weather, but woke up around midnight to a hellacious wind blowing down the mountainside, and my tent facing precisely the wrong way. The Hexamid doesn't like to be repositioned once it's pitched, but I had to pull out all 8 stakes and turn it around in the dark so the back of it absorbed all the wind, instead of it blowing through the open side. Put in earplugs to silence the disturbing noise of the tent and the pole straining so hard, woke up again at 2 to find it was raining, then finally got real sleep after that. Hiking by 7:10 this morning with the intent of a big-ish day.

After a few miles, the trail made a sudden transition back to the old white-boulders-and-mud style of 20 miles previous, but just as soon departed from it. For the most part the trail today was gentle and rolling, with an occasional steep mini-climb or -descent. Skies clear in the morning, but definitely not clear by noon. In the desert, Plato and Charlie used to shout, "Omar comin'!" whenever they saw dark clouds, which is apparently a The Wire reference, and now I can't see rainclouds without thinking of that and them. Rain and thunder started about 12:30 ... The rain wasn't ever that intense, and the temperature was warm enough that the rain actually had a pleasant cooling effect, but the thunder was constant overhead for a few hours. It only really stopped around 4:30. By that point I was 22 miles in looking at a water source at 27.5 for an end goal, but when I got there it happened to be a waterfall on a very steep cliff side. Collected water there intending to dry-camp at the next good spot I saw, which ended up not being too far past. Got to do another day like this to set myself up for being able to reach Echo Lake (mi 1094) by 4pm Thursday, which is when I told my dad I'd meet him. Camping alone for actually the first time in awhile.

Day 58: Monday, July 1

Tenting deep in the heart of the Sierra (1019.8), walked 1.3 miles today

Really crushed some miles today. Woke up after a crappy night's sleep in a hot stuffy room, enjoyed a free continental breakfast, then did my grocery shopping at the Bridgeport General Store. Prices were exorbitant--$2.35 for Idahoan packets, $6 for a jar of Skippy, $8 for a six-pack of Coors after taxes. Went to the PO and mailed my warm stuff back home to Eugene and said SEE YUHHH to my bear canister, which went back to Santa Ynez, CA. My pack now looks roughly like a middle-schooler's bookbag but with enormous hipbelts. Ate lunch with Brown Bag, who had just come down into town, and several markedly overweight locals at the Jolly Kone diner.

At this point I was checked out of the hotel but unwilling to leave town just yet due to sloth, an overfull stomach and bad weather on the horizon. So I headed to the laundromat to see what was the haps. No Day was there, I owed her a beer from two days ago when she recovered my lost flip-flops and hiked them a few miles up the trail to me. Bought her a 40 at her request, then I sat in the laundromat for a few hours with her, Instagate and a guy named Spark. Charged my phone and caught up on all my trail friends' blogs, including Spins' harrowing CDT blog (spinscdt.blogspot.com) which makes my adventures seem unadventurous. A thunderstorm passed through for an hour or so while I was in there. At around 3 I was ready to leave but rain still threatened and I wanted to eat one more time. Tucked away an enormous burrito at The Barn around 4:30 with the laundromat crew, then finally went to go hitch, allegedly one of the hardest rides to catch on the whole trail. So before I was even at the edge of town, without popping my thumb out, a van with a family driving home to Carson City pulled over and motioned me in ... They were heading back from LA where their son had just played in an AAU national baskteball tournament for 8th-graders. They took me about 15 miles to the intersection with the smaller Hwy 108, where Songbird and Banana Ripper were already standing waiting for a ride. After 15 minutes or so, a really interesting fellow named Ian gave us all a lift up to the pass in his rented Chevy Cruze. His story was that he comes out to the mountains all the time, by himself, from Pasadena to bomb down the roads from the passes on his longboard. Sometimes he golfs too on these trips, and he apparently always listens to the Grateful Dead really really loud. But he's always alone and says he's crashed multiple times at speeds over 50mph. He appeared to be about 40 as well, way old in my imagination for a solo skateboard/adrenaline junkie. His response when I told him I was from Eugene was, "Oh, I used to buy a shit ton of shrooms up there like 20 years ago." (He's not the first person I've met to express the "I've been there before, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time" sentiment in regards to Eugene.) He was very kind and took us up to the pass even though he hadn't intended to go all the way up there.

From there it was an absolutely miserable 1.3 miles uphill on a way-too-full stomach til I found a flat spot with water nearby and said no mas. Songbird and Ripper soon joined. 25s for the next three days to Echo Lake, where I meet my dad.

Day 57: Sunday, June 30

At the Silver Maple Motel in Bridgeport (PCT mi 1018.5), walked 24.9 miles today

Had an alarm set for 5 and it actually worked, all 3 of us (me, Hitch, No Day) were on the road by 6. Everyone has a routine now where all food is eaten and everything is packed up inside the tent, then all you do when you finally get out is break the tent down, shove it in the pack, and be off in less than two minutes so that the mosquitos don't have time to completely phlebotomize you. Head nets on the whole 5 miles up to Dorothy Lake Pass ... Suffice it to say the mosquitos hadn't forgotten about that place either and we did not tarry long. After more awful mud-pit walking and stream fords, we got to the 1000-mile mark and at least one of our party may have turned on his phone and belted out the Dwight Yoakam standard "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere" to the silent forest. Then we sat down for dinner--not where we eat but where we are eaten, as Hamlet would put it. After the saddest and most bug-infested celebratory snack break in history, we moved on.

... And then all of a sudden the bugginess and the bogginess stopped. The transition was almost instant and it felt like the desert again. No more white Sierra granite blocks, instead some dry red and brown volcanic gravelly stuff. Passed by and remembered the exact site where I had camped 8 years previous on the Overland Shasta Explorer of 2005. Then the trail started to climb into this crazy treeless red-rock alpine zone, and it was possibly the best I've felt the entire PCT so far. Had my headphones in and music on for the first time in weeks, the mosquitos were gone, the swamp was behind, and a really high, really epic-looking ridge traverse was straight ahead. Bombed through this whole area happy as could be ... I think it would have been remarkable under any circumstances, but having just come out of the two shittiest, sloppiest, most frustrating days so far, it seemed like heaven. In one of the pictures you can see Hitch's umbrella (silver dot) and a section-hiker (black dot) wayyy down below me on the trail.

Couldn't be contained at this point, which was mid-afternoonish ... Knew that Hitch probably wasn't going into Bridgeport because of the off-trail break she's about to take for a wedding, and that No Day wasn't feeling like getting to the highway all in one day. So I just went and went, 13 miles that would've otherwise seemed difficult flew by in 4 hours. Got to the road at Sonora Pass around 4:30, stuck out my thumb and maybe the fifth car picked me up and took me all the way to Bridgeport ... So much for the legendarily hard hitch. It was a family of three on their way to Mammoth for vacation, they had strong Russian accents and knew a _lot_ about the trail already. The dad, Alex, drove with a typically Russian disregard for oncoming traffic and road lines, but they were fantastic people to score a ride from because of how knowledgeable and good-natured they were.

They dropped me off near the laundromat ... My only concern at this point was where I would be sleeping, but immediately I saw Redbeard and he said he and 3 others had a motel room for the night and I might be able to crash on the floor. This worked out fine ... later I went to dinner at Rhino's, the local watering hole, with Songbird and Banana Ripper, a couple from Massachusetts. Songbird in her head was able to anagram Scrubhiker to my real name in about 30 seconds, which is essentially record time. Drank a couple of beers, retired to the room to do internet errands on the phone. No one else from the room around because they all caught a ride to some hot springs 30 minutes away.

Day 56: Saturday, June 29

Tenting near Falls Creek (PCT mi 993.6), walked 20.1 miles today

Woke up and promptly sat in my tent for at least a half hour doing nothing but eating. Normally I eat a small amount for breakfast either just before I leave or on the go, but today I wanted to get 10 miles' worth of calories down in case the bugs were so bad I couldn't stop for a break. They were still awful outside the tent when I packed up, but kind of torpid from the cool temperatures and therefore not very bitey. Trail immediately took me straight fuckin uphill, then straight fuckin downhill for the first 5 miles. Ran into a dude named Redbeard who is interesting for two reasons: one, that he can glide at least 4mph uphill, and two, he did some of the PCT in 2011 and had to stop in the middle with the exact same injury I probably had, the tibia stress fracture, and like me on the AT in 2011, only picked up the trail 100s of miles ahead after a few weeks' rest. We commiserated, then he glided off and I never saw him again. Stupid fast people.

Ran into Hitch and No Day in one of the less brutal sections of trail in the morning, hiked with them a bit. Talked with Hitch about the similarities between Sinhala and Hindi, among other things ... She's actually been to Sri Lanka, which makes her one of 3 Americans I've met outside of the ISLE program to have done so. Lost them going up another shittastically steep climb-descent-climb-descent section, met back up only after I took a long break lying down and possibly napping underneath a tree high up on a rock with no mosquitos. We had all wanted to do 23 to the same spot for tonight, but things started to slow down in the afternoon for no particular reason and it became clear after awhile, to me at least, that we weren't going to make it.

The bugs started to reach insane levels in the afternoon ... When the trail went low, it basically went through a marsh and then paralleled this Falls Creek on a gentle ascent, but everything beside the creek is also boggy and stagnant, and the creek itself is wide and slow for large sections. Walked with my head net on for the last 5 miles almost continuously, despite the heat (again it seemed about 90 today, even at 9k feet of altitude) ... I threw in the towel early, around 7:30 and 3 miles short of the goal, when I saw a good camp spot, because I was tired of walking in the mosquito cloud, but the number of bugs at this site was even worse than anywhere else so far. When I got my tent set up and did my dive-in-zip-up routine, literally 50 mosquitos made it in with me. It's usually a few minutes' work, but this time I had to spend 15 minutes clapping all of them. From the tent, flagged down Hitch and No Day when they walked by. They also stopped here, we want to get up super early tomorrow and make Sonora Pass/Bridgeport by the afternoon.

Day 55: Friday, June 28

Tenting a bit of the way down the Benson Lake Trail (PCT mi 973.5), walked 25.3 miles today

Woke up at 7:30, did not actually get on the PCT headed north until about 9 because the first time I tried to leave I got lost in the Glen Aulin labyrinth. Didn't realize I had to backtrack part of yesterday's path to get back to the PCT. Other World showed me the way, then she and I walked and talked for a few miles. She and her fiance want to move from San Diego to Williams, Oregon, of all places, to settle down once they're married next spring. Neither of them have ever been there or know anyone there. To each his own.

Took a nice lunch break at Virginia Canyon, which I soon learned was the last place on the trail free of bugs. It was hot today, maybe 90, def the warmest since the end of the desert section. My bandannas, at 1oz each, have been dead weight for a long time now but I finally put them to use taking a cold drip shower from the river. Zipped off my shants for the first time since owning them and busted out a pretty awful 4-mile climb to Benson Pass. Ran into Billy Goat, a living trail legend, on the way up but never even got to introduce myself because another thru-hiker named Carrot was already talking to him asking such incisive questions as, "Billy Goat,what's Northern California like?" and "Billy Goat, when does it start raining in Washington?" Got to the pass and it was cooler and windy and there was no water around and I thought, "Great, there won't be any bugs here" ... then I saw two other hikers sitting with their head nets on and quickly realized how horribly, horribly wrong my assumption was. Couldn't really take my intended break up there ... At one point when I was trying to relax anyway I reached back, slapped the back of my shoulder, and 5 dead mosquitos showed up on my palm. Got worse from there, the entire hike down was a slog through a swampy and apparently neglected piece of trail, got lost for 15 minutes when the trail completely disappeared in the middle of a boulder field. Couldn't concentrate on anything except the bugs, I even hiked with my head net on, which I would normally say is way hot and uncomfortable, but it was better than having them bite my face, which they were definitely doing. It was getting dark by the time I got down to the vicinity of the lake ... Camping options on the PCT were nonexistent due to swampiness, so I went down the spur to the lake and eventually found a passable spot. Bugs were insane here too but I put on my mosquito playlist, for now comprised of "Welcome to the Terrordome" by Public Enemy and "Seek and Destroy" by Metallica, and methodically eliminated all the 20 or so mosquitos that had ridden into the tent with me when I first got in. The bugs suck so bad that I'm considering doing more big miles tomorrow and getting to Sonora Pass Sunday afternoon instead of Monday sometime, which was my original plan. I don't like to use hyperbole, but it's kind of torturous having to hike in this. The mosquitos control everything ... Can't take breaks, can't get enough calories down, don't even want to stop and look at the maps, etc. Could use to just get this section over with ASAP so I can go back to my usual MO of enjoying walking.

Day 54: Thursday, June 27

Tenting at Glen Aulin (PCT mi 948.4), walked 5.9 miles today

Took a rather unexpected nearo today. Woke up late, at 8am, was relieved to find that I hadn't unwittingly crashed anyone's site in the dark last night. Not many people around, in fact ... saw Two Hats nearby and chatted with him for a bit, then took my sweet time packing up and headed over to the Tuolumne General Store to resupply. True to their reputation, they did have a pretty thorough selection of hiker food in a very small space ... had no trouble finding food to get 75 miles up the trail.

Outside of the store there was a shady area with a few picnic tables and it was completely overrun with hikers. Hard to describe the scene except that it looks kind of the way those big groups of bums do when they take over a park or a public square in Eugene in the summertime. Everyone's way too relaxed, a little rowdy, and there is shit just everywhere ... Everybody's backpack is in some state of explosion and outdoors gear and food and trash and people cover pretty much every surface. Ended up spending about 7 hours right there hanging out and periodically popping into the store for more food. Ate 8 bananas today. Had my first microbrew in awhile. Met a lot of cool new people, including Sexy Legs (who is a guy), Other World, Hitch, Double Sprainbow for the first time in a few hundred miles, Happy Hour, Twice, the Viking. Messenger and Chozen One were also there, as was Squeaks, who I hiked with wayyy back on the very first days of the AT in April 2011. Like, she and Chevy were two of the first people I ever talked to on trail. Chevy doesn't seem to be in the picture anymore, however.

Sprainbow and I talked for a little while about what makes hiker blogs blow up with traffic all of a sudden ... She said it's as soon as something really crazy happens on your hike. For her, it was getting married to her hiking partner (have never been able to recall his trail name, probs because it pales in comparison to Double Sprainbow) on the street in Lone Pine by another hiker, 789, who had just been ordained online. For someone else she knows, it was having all their food destroyed by a bear somewhere quite far away from civilization. She also said that when hikers start linking to each other's journals, traffic increases, so for that, I will plug her blog, rikaandolislongasswalk.com. Guess I just need something radical to happen to me, or I've got to make it happen myself. I will take suggestions in the comments.

Genuinely did not feel like walking most of the day, but at 4pm sharp I could feel my energy come back all at once and I needed to leave. Left at 4:30 and walked what I think are probably the 6 prettiest miles of trail so far, along the Tuolumne River. Not jaw-dropping, stunning, disbelief-inspiring--just pretty. Sit back and go, "Ahhh" type of thing. Communing merrily with the deer and the pikas and the marmots, with that ukulele cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow playing in the background ... that type of hiking. Got to Glen Aulin at 7:30 to find that it wasn't what I expected, it's kind of like a small semi-permanent village in the woods. Wandered way up and to the back of the backpackers' zone to a more secluded area and found Other World already here ... Was hoping for a bunch of the crowd from the store to show up, but even if they did, the Glen Aulin site is just too spread out and they'll never find us, or us them. What to do. A great day regardless.